Since The Pale King stands unfinished, and given Wallace’s well-known multi-draft work ethic, it seems reasonable to grant that the novel’s prose will necessarily be sometimes more polished, sometimes less so. But in general it is fair to say that, in places, the novel’s prose is also some of the finest that Wallace ever wrote. By which I do not mean the most snazzy and pyrotechnical in the way of his early works. Here we find an artist consciously pushing himself toward a more measured, tempered prose, the voice of one well-poised, not well-posed. It sounds a little facile when stated flatly, but The Pale King feels like the novel that was carrying Wallace into a fuller, deeper artistic maturity. After such a promising early career, and in the knowledge of the author’s exceptional talents, it is saddening to think that we will never see the outcome of that process.